'Gift Horse' can still do the trick

Tuesday

Apr 18, 2017 at 4:32 PMApr 18, 2017 at 4:32 PM

The New Repertory Theatre in Watertown closes its season with “The Gift Horse,” a play Lydia Diamond wrote 25 years ago. A more mature and accomplished playwright at this point in her career, Diamond admits there’s a temptation to edit the play. But she’s smart enough to know she shouldn’t scratch that itch.

By Alexander Stevens, Correspondent

The New Repertory Theatre in Watertown closes its season with “The Gift Horse,” a play Lydia Diamond wrote 25 years ago. A more mature and accomplished playwright at this point in her career, Diamond admits there’s a temptation to edit the play. But she’s smart enough to know she shouldn’t scratch that itch.

“That’s been the hardest thing – to just sit on my hands” and not re-write scenes, she says. “I realize that going in and tweaking the play isn’t honoring the writer I was at the time. It would be like Madonna going back and re-writing ‘Like a Virgin.’ ”

Then she hears the clicking of the keyboard on the other end of the phone line. “Oh, you’re going to put that in the story,” she says. “Maybe you should leave that out. ‘Like a Virgin’? It doesn’t sound like I have much gravitas.”

History is pretty clear about Diamond and gravitas; she’s got plenty.

Playwrighting commissions, awards, fellowships, and, at age 23, she wrote a play that a highly respected professional theater company wants to remount 25 years later. “The Gift Horse” runs April 22 to May 14 at New Rep.

She says New Rep artistic director Jim Petosa “remembered ‘Gift Horse,’ and he thought it would be a good fit with this season [which is thematically built on the idea of reflection]. It appealed to him that I had written it a long time ago.”

Diamond believes that “The Gift Horse” ventured into new territory when she wrote it. She says she identifies closely with the lead female, a “hyper-literate” African-American woman who’s an educator and artist. The character is dealing with a very difficult past, and she’s finding support and comfort from her gay Latino male friend.

“You really didn’t see African-Americans and Latinos portrayed this way,” says Diamond. “It was very new.”

And then there are the complex issues they’re navigating.

“One of the characters is HIV-positive,” says Diamond. “In those days, we thought that meant he’d die tomorrow. And the way we talk about rape and incest – it’s changed a lot in the past 25 years. Like all of my plays, it’s funny, fun to watch, and interesting, but it’s not a play I would have written today.”

Despite the heavy issues in a play that Diamond describes as “quite autobiographical,” the playwright knows how to keep it light, when necessary.

“It’s peculiar to the way that I write – and the way that I move through the world – that there’s a lot of laughter in the play,” she says. “Levity doesn’t stop just because difficult things happen.”

Petosa chose a theme for this season at New Rep – “What’s Past is Prologue” – and “Gift Horse” was a kind of prolog to Diamond’s career. She remembers those days fondly.

“At 23, I just had a passion for telling stories,” says Diamond, who’s celebrating her 48th birthday as we chat on the phone. “I wasn’t writing ‘Gift Horse’ for money. It wasn’t a commission. It was just a story that needed to come out. It is a pure and lovely way to make art.”

Diamond knows something about commissions; she’s received them from some of the country’s most respected theaters, including Steppenwolf in Chicago, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. And if you wrote down all her accomplishments – residencies, an honorary doctorate, and a W.E.B. Du Bois Institute non-resident fellowship, to name a few – you’d get writer’s cramp.

But perhaps the highlight of her resume is “Stick Fly,” a play that was beautifully staged by the Huntington Theater in 2010, and caught fire. Directed by Kenny Leon, it ended up on Broadway, and Diamond became that rarest of theater birds – a Boston playwright with a national reputation.

So it’s too bad Boston can’t claim her any longer. About three years ago, she returned home to Chicago, where she lives with her husband and son.

“Boston was very good to me,” says Diamond, “but this is home.”

She misses teaching. She was a member of the faculty at Boston University when her family relocated to Chicago, and she was inspired by her students. They may have been as important to Diamond as she was to them.

“Not-teaching is making me old,” she says. “I think you need to be around young people to feel fully connected.”

Diamond says she’d be happy to provide any kind of support to the New Rep production, but she doesn’t expect it’ll be necessary.

“I think you should let the play go into the talented hands” of the artists and technicians who bring it to the stage, she says. And she has complete faith in director Petosa, with whom she worked at Boston University.

“As a director,” she says, “he has an elegant hand.”

And so the past is prologue not only for New Rep, but also for Diamond, as she looks back on a play that’s kind of about looking back.

Or is it?

“I feel the play is less about the past than it is the future,” she says. “It’s about love and endurance. All these people are fine. They’re OK. Love and friendship push us through [difficult situations] and help us survive.”

But then there’s a brief pause as Diamond reflects on her description.

“I don’t want the play to sound schmaltzy,” she says. “It’s not ‘Beaches.’”